Dance Me To the End of Love
by starfish.dancer
Summary: Inspired by this prompt at the puckracheldrabblememe: "Shelby dies. In her will, she says Puck can have Beth's custody - only if he marries Rachel." Rated M to be on the safe side, though probably closer to T.


**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

Dance Me To the End of Love

He shows up on her doorstep in November. Well, not exactly her doorstep, since she lives in an apartment, but he's sitting on the stairs out front when she comes back from rehearsal because her doorman wouldn't let him into the building. She files that away to tell her dads the next time they worry about her living in the City alone. Now that she's earning a regular salary working her way toward the Great White Way (she's closer than ever, taking a supporting role in a show that's about to open on Broadway in the New Year that she can feel is going to be a hit), she's been tucking money away to buy her own apartment, but in the meantime she likes her little place.

She didn't think it was possible, but he's even more attractive than the last time she'd seen him, over two years ago in a grocery store in Lima, when she was picking up ingredients to make latkes for Hannukah.

"Noah, what on earth are you doing here?" she finally asks when they are sitting on the cute couch her dads had bought her from Ikea when she got cast in an off-Broadway production she'd auditioned for on a whim a month into her second year at NYADA. She'd taken the small part and moved out of dorms at her professor's encouragement. She's never looked back, not even when she had to work insane shifts to supplement her wages in her first two years as a professional actress in this expensive city.

Noah tightens his grip around the hot coffee she'd insisted on making him when she found out he'd been waiting for a few hours, since he'd gotten her address from Kurt, who still sends her postcards from Los Angeles, but he didn't know her schedule.

"Rachel, I don't know if you've heard, but... Shelby's dead," he says, watching her face for her reaction. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat.

"I know," she says, shrugging a shoulder a little because she still doesn't really know how she feels about it. She hasn't seen or heard from Shelby since senior year at McKinley, and even then it was not really more than two strangers passing in the hallway. Shelby was there for Sugar, not Rachel. The rejection still stings even after all these years, when she thinks about it. So she tries not to think about it. "Her lawyer called me, shortly after the accident. I guess I was named in her will, but there's nothing really that I wanted from her, so I didn't go to the reading."

She shrugs again, because he's always been able to tell when she wasn't being truthful, especially with herself, and she knows she's not being entirely honest. There was a lot she wanted from Shelby. Nothing Shelby was ever willing to give her, though. She'd accepted that long ago, and now her biological mother is dead and can't give her any of those things, so a last will and testament can't really change that.

"I went," Noah says, and he's looking into his coffee cup like it holds the secrets of the universe. "She left me Beth."

She inhales sharply at the name, even though she doesn't want to react at all. She wonders if it will always be that way when she hears the name, feels the sting of not being enough all over again. But she's not that needy high school girl any more, so she steels herself and smiles gently, sets her hand on his knee. "That's a good thing, Noah. I know you love that little girl, and I'm sure you'll do a fantastic job raising her."

"There's a condition," he says, and she's not sure why, but dread pools in her stomach. He looks up at her, pins her with his eyes. "She left me Beth on the condition that I get married to either Quinn Fabray or Rachel Berry. And Quinn..."

She literally feels the blood rush away from her face in a surge and Noah must notice because he's suddenly got her face in his hands. "Rachel," his voice sounds like it is coming from far away, though a worried undertone is still audible. "Rachel, are you still with me?"

She's not sure she is, because she's thinking about how Quinn Fabray is now Quinn Watkins, living in Connecticut with the man she fell in love with in freshman year at Yale and, according to the Christmas card she'd received two days ago, expecting a baby in another five months.

"Rachel," Noah says again. She laughs and it sounds a little hysterical. She stands abruptly, rushes to the kitchen sink where she grips the edges with white knuckled fingers as she dry heaves. She feels rather than sees Noah come behind her, his hand moving in soothing circles around the small of her back as she retches. Nothing comes out. She's so empty.

"That woman is a piece of work," she says when the heaving stops and she can breathe again. "She just... keeps cropping up to interfere in my life with complete disregard for what it costs me."

"I know," he says lowly. "But Rachel, it's Beth. Please, please... it's Beth."

She closes her eyes, shuts them tight. Her hands are still gripping the sink, hard, like she'll fall if she lets go. She's shaking, tiny trembles like aftershocks, and Noah must be watching her as tears begin to leak down her cheeks because she can hear him open her fridge and a bottle of water is being pressed against her arm. She's seen him maybe once or twice in the past few year when passing through Lima to visit her dads, but he still knows her, remembers little details like she still feels thirsty whenever she's sad.

She gulps down water, drains the bottle in a few pulls, sets the empty container on the counter.

"Okay," she says. "Okay."

He breathes out a sob of his own, like he's been holding his breath ever since the moment he left the lawyer's office to pack a duffle bag and drive to New York. He pulls her into his arms, whispering thank you over and over into her hair.

***

It happens fairly quickly, more quickly than she could have fathomed, if she'd ever thought about this kind of thing happening. Which she hasn't, not in the slightest.

They look up how to apply for a marriage license and begin the application process that evening on her laptop. They call her dads and his mom, and while none of the parents are particularly thrilled with the idea, they at least try to be supportive. Noah won't let her give up her bed, but she is able to borrow a blow up mattress from her neighbour so they push her coffee table out of the way and set it up on the floor in her living room. She has rehearsal the next day but not until the afternoon, so she sets her alarm and they get up so they are at the Office of the Clerk as it opens since the two of them have to show up together and in person to get a license. They have to wait at least 24 hours for it to be valid, and by complete coincidence or friendly twist of fate, they aren't rehearsing any of her scenes the next day.

She doesn't have many close friends, and the few she has (her roommate from NYADA who lives in London, a couple of former coffee shop workers) couldn't come to her wedding on short notice. Except, perhaps, the man she's been seeing. She meets him for coffee after her rehearsal because he's trauma surgeon and that's all he could spare time for. She's loathe to break up with him in public, but she doesn't have much of a choice. It's not a conversation she wants to relive, even though he's as kind as he can be about the situation. They haven't been seeing each other long enough for him to understand why she's doing this and he says some unkind things when she won't reverse her decision.

She wasn't in love with him, wasn't even close since she's stopped wearing her heart on her sleeve after the final disaster with Finn Hudson, but she'd really liked him and had started to see the possibility of a future with Avery.

She's still crying a little when she walks back into the apartment. Noah is sitting on her couch, watching some sports channel she didn't know she had. He looks startled when she comes in, head down and trying to wipe her eyes subtly, though she can tell from his expression that she doesn't succeed.

"You okay?" he asks hesitantly.

"Yeah," she says. "Just... broke up with my boyfriend."

He swears. It's quiet, but she heard. "Rachel, I didn't know..."

She shrugs. It's become her default setting. "It's done," she says finally.

She takes off her shoes and pads to her bedroom, lays down on the bed even though its early, curls her knees up to her chest. After a few longs minutes, she feels the bed dip behind her and Noah is laying behind her. She doesn't turn around. He sets a hand on her hip, runs it up and down her side gently before wrapping his arms around her. She doesn't fight him, lets him pull her back against the hard planes of his chest.

He doesn't ask her if she's sure about this, or tell her she doesn't have to go through with it. Maybe he knows that they're just words, knows her well enough still to know she's not going to leave a little girl to foster care, not even the little girl who replaced her. Maybe he's just desperate enough not to give her ideas.

"How's this going to work?" she asks finally, when they've been lying there breathing in sync for at least an hour. They've discussed some of it. They are going to live in New York, even though another change for Beth is probably not ideal, because he's a mechanic and can work anywhere and she can't give up her career, can't give up everything. It will kill her. They'll buy a place with the money from Shelby's estate, though it won't go as far as it would in Lima. They haven't gotten much past that.

He prods her hips until she turns in his arms. "I'm going to take care of you," is what he says when she's facing him, tear tracks stained on her face. He brushes her bangs out of her eyes, weaves his fingers into her hair as he leans in to kiss her. He's always been the type to express himself physically, and even though she hasn't had much experience reading his body, she so much wiser than the teenager who'd broken up with him on the bleachers in sophomore year. She tastes salt on her lips as she lets him push her sweater up over her head and fit himself between her thighs. She doesn't know if its her or him or both who are crying.

He doesn't sleep in the living room that night.

***

She gets married in a pale blue dress she's had since freshman year at NYADA, and he wears his jeans and a shirt she irons because it had been hastily stuffed in his duffle bag. He apologizes for not thinking to pack a pair of dress pants. It's probably one of the most ridiculous conversations she's had in her life, given their situation.

He holds her hand at the courthouse when she starts twisting the straps of her purse as they wait in line. The judge looks over their paperwork disinterestedly, and she feels a moment of panic when he asks if they have rings to exchange. Noah pulls out a box from his pocket, though, and there is a plain gold band for him and a sapphire on a gold band for her.

"It was Nanna Connie's," he says when she asks, later, after the paperwork is signed and filed, tells her he picked up the plain gold band from a jeweler a few blocks from her building while she was at rehearsal the other day. The ring is a little big on her finger because he didn't know her size and wouldn't have had time to get it adjusted anyway. They stop at the store on the way home and she gets them to put a ring guard on, since it is easy and Noah didn't know you could do that. She tells him it is her something new, since she's in something old and blue. She lets him take her on the blow up mattress when they get back to the apartment when he tells her they have to consummate on the something borrowed to make sure she gets her full set.

Her cast mates ask about the new bling the next day and it feels incredibly strange to tell them she's married.

***  
>Noah leaves for a month, goes back to Lima to finish out his work and take custody of Beth. She flies up for a few days when she has a few days off in a row, helps Noah pack up two households and meet Beth. She's a quiet little thing at seven years old, and Rachel doesn't know if this is a transformation as the result of loss, shyness, or whether she's always been this way. Beth looks very much like the ice queen that tormented her throughout high school, though Rachel tries very hard not to think about that. She's got Noah's eyes, and that helps.<p>

Rachel wonders if it hurts Beth to look at her, when she looks very much like the mother they've both lost. It's a fleeting thought, and one she will never allow herself to ask.

They put Shelby's personal effects in storage at Rachel's dads' house, and put the house Beth has grown up in on the market. Noah has a renter lined up for the small bungalow he'd got for a song when the ancient owner, Mr. Dobson, had died. Noah had fixed it up in his spare time, and it will do nicely as an income property. Mrs. Puckerman had complained vocally about the decision to move to New York even as she'd been over cheerful with Beth, who had simply fixed her grandmother with a solemn look. She'd seemed more comfortable, strangely enough, with Rachel's dads. Then again, the new "grandfathers" had put away whatever feelings they had for Shelby and this situation and treated Beth like an adult. She loves her dads a little more for it.

They don't find a place in New York as quickly as they'd like, but Rachel's building manager is pretty understanding and lets them move into a newly-opened two bedroom for a month while they look for a sale property when Noah offers to do some repairs to the building pro-bono. They eventually find a place they can live with that they can afford with the proceeds from the sale of Shelby's house. It's a little further from the theatre district, but close enough to a subway station that it doesn't make much of a difference on her commute. It's a two bedroom with a small den and there's no view, really, to speak of, but the open concept makes it look bigger and Rachel loves the stainless steel appliances. They let Beth paint her room pepto-bismol pink and pick out new purple sheets and a bedspread. She elbows Noah when he says it looks like My Little Pony exploded in the room and tells Beth it looks lovely. Noah tells her she can choose to paint their bedroom whatever colour she wants, even though she can tell he's a little afraid that he'll end up with a Holly Hobby room like her childhood bedroom.

It strikes her that they are like polite strangers living together, all three of them. She paints the walls a colour called silver spring and hopes for the best. Noah tells her he likes the colour, takes her hand and plays with her wedding band on her finger. It feels significant, somehow.

***

It doesn't take them long to settle into a sort of routine. She works evenings, of course, so Noah gets up with Beth in the morning, gets her ready for school and then sends her on her bus while Rachel sleeps, then heads to the job he found at a garage that's a half hour away by commute. He brings in her morning smoothie and starts a fresh pot of coffee before he heads out the door, so it is still hot when she finishes her morning run on the elliptical in their building's gym. When Beth gets home from school, Rachel meets her at the bus stop and they go home to have a healthy snack as the little girl does her homework at the table and Rachel makes dinner. She has to head out the door not long after Noah comes in, and he's in bed by the time she slips between the sheets next to him. It doesn't stop him from waking up to pull her to him, to kiss down her body and make her gasp out his name.

They've never talked about it, at least not in so many words, but they both know this can't be a marriage in name only. She said vows, and those mean something to her. She's known him most of her life, and there's always been an attraction between them, one he acts on now on a regular basis - not that she has any complaints. She's a lot more guarded than she used to be, but if she was honest with herself she'd have to admit that she's riding the edge of falling in love with him, watching him raise the child he'd wanted to keep so badly from the beginning. He'd worked so hard to be a part of Beth's life, to stay involved and be Beth's daddy when Shelby let him back into his biological daughter's life. Rachel can't help but love him for it, for forging a connection and not simply walking away because things weren't easy.

She doesn't expect him to love her back. She doesn't expect anyone to love her back any more.

(If she thought about it with unbiased eyes, she might realise that he's got his own reasons to love her. She's given him a family at great personal cost. He's been in love with her from the moment she said she'd marry him and he's bound and determined to use whatever time he has with her to break past her carefully-built defenses until he can be sure she won't slip away from him the day Beth turns eighteen. It's not easy, not when scars left over from high school make her hold herself apart because she can't let herself believe that anyone will let her belong.)

Rachel is six weeks into production of How the Light Gets In when she gets a call from Beth's school. There's a flu bug going around, and apparently it had hit the little girl early in the day. The school can't get through to the garage, so they call her cell phone as she's stepping out of the shower. She pulls on a pair of jeans and a sweater, runs a comb through her hair, and secures it in a pony tail in a cab on the way to the school. Beth is lying in the nurses office, a yellow plastic bucket next to her. Her cheeks are flushed with fever and she looks miserable. She throws up twice in the cab home, and Rachel runs a hand soothingly down her back. They don't have any ginger ale or children's Tylenol at the house, but she get the cab driver to run in to a convenience store on the way, tips him extra for his trouble. She helps Beth clean up and change into a pair of clean pyjamas and curl up in bed.

Beth starts to cry, even as Rachel brings her a glass of ginger ale stirred flat and a clean bucket in case she can't make it to the bathroom.

"I really want my mommy," she says, and Rachel can't do much more than card her fingers through Beth's hair and tell her she knows. She cries a little, too.

"Can you sing the regret song?" Beth sniffles.

"The regret song?" Rachel asks. "What regret song?"

"The one my mommy sang when I get sick, about the poker face. She only sings it when we're sad because she said when your heart is hurting already it doesn't matter if you make it hurt a little more."

"The song made her heart hurt?" Rachel breathes, her own squeezing like someone has clamped a vice down around it.

Beth nods. "Cause of waste chances, even if the song words don't say that. She said she could 'splain when I get older. Do you know the song?"

"Yeah," Rachel says. "I know the song."

"Your voice is really pretty," Beth says when the last note rings out quietly, half asleep. Rachel waits until she's all the way down before she goes to her room to cry.

When Noah gets home that evening, they are watching a Disney movie in the living room. Beth's temperature is still a little high, but she's keeping down her toast and seems content to lie one the couch with her head on Rachel's lap, one hand tucked under her cheek and the other curved around Rachel's knee.

"Daddy, I'm sick," she says when he comes in the door.

"I can see that," he says, coming to drop a kiss on Beth's forehead before turning to his wife. "You could have called me, I would have come home sooner, so you could get ready to go."

"I called the director already," she says. "My understudy is going on tonight."

"It's Friday, though."

"I know," she says, smiling a little at him even as she runs a cool hand over Beth's forehead.

He doesn't say anything more, just leans down to drop a kiss on her mouth and another on the side of her jaw.

"Beth kind of loves me when she's sick," Rachel says later, after he's carried the sleeping girl into her bed and they are doing the dishes together in the kitchen. Noah looks at her a little strangely.

"Beth loves you all the time," he says.

She shakes her head like she doesn't believe the words, a sad smile on her face. He captures her arms and turns her back to face him, won't let her walk away.

"Hey," he says, repeats it again when she won't meet his eyes. "Listen to me. I know that what happened with Shelby was fucked up. The woman made a number of questionable decisions, up to and including making marriage a condition of custody. But the stupidest decision she ever made was not to fight tooth and nail to keep you in her life, and I think in her own fucked up way, her will was her way of expressing that she wanted to fix it so that you were a part of her life, a part of Beth's life."

She wants to shake him off, to turn away, but he won't let her. He presses his forehead to hers, stares her down, makes her read the truth in his eyes.

"We're family, Rachel. You, me, and Beth. We're family," he repeats, sliding his grip down her arms until he's holding her hands in his.

"Okay," she says, lets herself fall. "Okay."

***

They're a family, and it's easier than she could ever have imagined when she finally takes down the walls, opens her heart to the possibility that others are capable of loving her. Sometimes she slips into old habits, but Noah never fails to remind her, to coax her into the real smile she wears more often now than the mask her show smile used to be, no matter how many years have passed.

Like the year Beth turns eleven and they move into a bigger home. She's just finishing up two years into a run playing Elphaba in the Broadway revival of Wicked will spend six weeks reprising her role in the upcoming feature film of How the Light Gets In, which begins production next month. They can more than afford the 4-bedroom place they'd fallen in love with, all three of them. Beth paints her room yellow this time, and she doesn't get why Rachel laughs when her daddy calls it a shade of Holly Hobby.

Beth is registered at a private school, so there are few changes beyond her bus route. Her best friend, however, still lives in the old neighbourhood, and they spend most weekends trading off sleepovers. Noah is very fond of taking advantage of lengthy periods of time when Beth is out of the house, and Rachel will admit she's fairly fond of it as well.

Which is how she finds herself underneath him (this time), his lips finding that spot on her neck while he reaches into the bedside table drawer.

"No, no, don't," she breathes, grabbing for his outstretched arm as best she can (she's a little distracted. He gets a frustrated look on his face as he starts to pull away, and she whines as she presses his other hand back between them to continue the task at hand.

"Mixed signals, babe," Noah says, groaning against her collar bone. "You're saying no, but your hands are on my -"

"Not no to sex," she gasps out, cutting him off. "No to the - I mean, can we have a baby?"

His hands go still against her and she can't help but let out a little whimper. "You wanna have my baby?"

"Yes," she says. It's maybe not the most coherent of times to bring it up, but she's been reluctant to commit to anything long-term and when she had coffee with her her agent today and had been asked her if she was thinking of getting pregnant, she realised that just maybe she's been subconsciously doing that. She bites her lip. "D'you wanna?"

"Fuck, yes," he says. She blinks a little in surprise, because he's emphatic about it, even though it's never come up before. It makes sense, though. He's always said she's given him so much. Maybe he didn't think he could ask for more. She wants to give him more.

"Do you think I'll make a good mom?" she asks, her voice going a little shy.

"Baby," he says, his hands beginning their agonizingly delicious pattern all over again. "Baby, you already are."

***

In high school, when she dreamed of her happily-ever-after, she never thought she'd be married to Noah Puckerman. Never thought she'd get to be a mother, let alone one who learns to balance a Broadway career with Beth's soccer games and making up lullabies with Beth as Noah plays guitar to a new baby girl and to the boy who comes a few years after that. Though she'll never know Shelby's intentions when she wrote that will, whether she ever considered that an early death could come to pass and what it would mean, there's no sting any more, only forgiveness. In death, like she was never able to in life, Shelby had given Rachel everything she'd wanted from her biological mother. She'd given her love. Her life is not what she'd dreamed it would be, all those years ago in Lima. It's so much better. 


End file.
